Video: Moving color groups between documents

I am still working away inside Yet another variation.ai because I forgot to show you the before and after. I had prepared for that eventuality by hiding my selection edges and yet I didn't get around to doing it. So here's the before and after here's what we accomplished in the previous exercise. This is what the background look like before, if I press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac. Here is what it looks like now after having reassigned the colors inside the Recolor Artwork dialog box. Now let's say what I want to do. I want to recolor this T-shirt right here, so it's the inverse version of that color scheme, because we don't need to see two side-by-side blue T-shirts, we want one of them to show the dark T-shirt with a light trim.

In Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced, author and industry expert Deke McClelland teaches how to take advantage of the wide array of dynamic features in Illustrator CS5. This course demonstrates how to apply these features to paths, groups, and editable text to create professional-quality artwork. The course covers Live Trace, Live Paint, and Live Color, as well as symbols, gradients, exporting, and integration with Photoshop. Exercise files accompany the course.

Moving color groups between documents

I am still working away inside Yet another variation.ai because I forgot to showyou the before and after.I had prepared for that eventuality by hiding my selection edges and yet Ididn't get around to doing it.So here's the before and after here's what we accomplished in the previous exercise.This is what the background look like before, if I press Ctrl+Z, Command+Z on the Mac.Here is what it looks like now after having reassigned the colors inside theRecolor Artwork dialog box.Now let's say what I want to do.I want to recolor this T-shirt right here, so it's the inverse version of thatcolor scheme, because we don't need to see two side-by-side blue T-shirts, wewant one of them to show the dark T-shirt with a light trim.

So what I am going to need to do in order to grab those color, so I get an exactmatch with what I did inside the other document is, I'm going over to Eightcolors to choose from.ai file and I need to grab these color groups right herethat I created inside the Swatches panel.Then I will take those color groups over to the other illustration and then I'llyou use that Blue color group right there, Shades of blue in order to remap thecolors inside the Recolor Artwork dialog box.So let me show you how that works.So we're getting more and more advanced with our approach here.I am going to go ahead and grab these guys click on one Shift+Click on the otherto select all four of these color groups and you know what, I might as well makea color group for these yellow shirts as well.

So I grab them, I click on the New Color Group icon at the bottom of theSwatches panel I'll call this Yellow shades and then I'll click OK and so thatgives me the blacks and whites once again.Click off in order to deselect, click off the color group click on one colorShift+Click on the other grab them, drag them to the trash can I wish you'd stopdoing that and then I'll go ahead and click on the Yellow shades groupShift+Click on Shades of blue, so all five of those groups are selected.I will drop down to this icon in the bottom left hand corner of the Swatchespanel to get to the Swatch Libraries and I will choose Save Swatches.

Definitely save to the location that Illustrator suggests here and I'll callthis new swatches file something like Five shade groups.Should work good enough it's kind of generic but it will worl for me, clickon the Save button.Now let's switch over to, Yet another variation that file in progressright there and I'll drop down to this exact same icon there at the bottomof the Swatches panel.Click on it, choose User Defined, and choose Five shade groups.So you may see some other options, but just go ahead and choose the one that Ijust created if you're working along with me.

I'll go ahead and open up Five shade groups and then the simplest thing to do isjust click on each one of them to add them to the list.If you had a lot more you could go ahead and select them all and drag and dropof over, but that could result in some duplicate, so why go that route.Anyway, I am going to go ahead and close this little panel that I opened thereand now I want to lock my Backdrop layer just so I don't end up selecting any ofthe background items.I'm going to marquee my T-shirt, the right-hand T-shirt and I might as well sortof scroll it over a little bit so I can see what I am doing.

I still have my Selection Edges hidden, so I could press Ctrl+H, Command+H onthe Mac to bring them back if I want.Then I will go out to Recolor Artwork icon in the Control panel, click on it inorder to bring up Recolor Artwork and we want to recolor these colors and thosewe only have three shades of blue inside this particular T-shirt.I'm going to click on Shades of blue to remap them.Only nothing happens because all of these colors are already found inside ofthe Four color group.So what in the world do I do?Well, we want to create a new container, new row here for our colors.

So I will drop down to the new row icon and click on it and notice right awayIllustrator smart enough to say, hey!You must want to remap something to the fourth color inside this group which ofcourse is absolutely true.Then the question becomes, well what do I want to remap?Well I want to remap these wrinkle colors right there, this dark wrinkle panesI want to remap them to this dark color and I just need do figure out what they are.So I will grab my magnifying glass, click on this top one because I suspectthat's what it is and sure enough those are the wrinkles that's the colorassigned to the wrinkles as well is those interior areas of the sleeve and the collar.

So I will click off that color.Actually you don't have to, you can go ahead and drag this guy down to this rowand drop it in a place if you want to.You just won't see a preview of what you've done until you turn the magnifyingglass off and now it's going to darken up which is great and then I want to takethis guy and move him into this group right there because I want to make whatwas formerly dark light and what was formerly light dark.So I am going to drag this guy into this group and that doesn't look right atall and we'll solve that in just a moment and then I'll go ahead and drag thisguy down into weird that one was just a moment ago to the third row and it willremap like so and that looks absolutely hunky-dory.

So it looks like everything's worked out fine.But let me show you why it wasn't looking fine at just a moment ago.Put this guy back where he was.The problem is that Illustrator is trying to map the colors to tints.So Scale Tints is the default option here.I am going to switch it to Exact so everybody is getting matched to the exactshade and then I'll click off and that definitely does the trick.However now we have two colors matching to that exact same shade of blue.So we don't have a difference between the trim and the fabric color.So, in order to recolor the trim I'll grab this color, drag it down into thethird row, drop into place and we get this result here.

It turns out what we want.So we're not bothered by the fact we have an empty row at the top, just ignore that.Click OK in order to accept your changes.Illustrator this time doesn't whine about whether or not you should saveyour changes to the color group because you didn't make any changes to the color group.So that's a nice thing.The final thing we need to do it in order to complete the effect is go ahead andremap this white to black and we are going to do that manually.I suppose we could have done it inside the Recolor Artwork dialog box, but itwould have been more work than it was worth.So I'll go ahead and switch to my White Arrow tool because this shirt I believeis grouped together.

I'd have to go ahead and sort of open things up.Actually well, it's not.So one of these type objects is what I want.I don't have to switch the White Arrow tool.Again, my Black Arrow tool, by pressing the V key and I'll just go ahead andclick on this type to select it independently of everything else, awesome.All right now, I will change it to black and I want a weak black I don't wantthe rich black because that's going to be too much ink, is basically why andI'll show you in a moment.But I want this guy which is just if I hover over it it's zero for CM and Y and a 100% black.

So I will click on it in that first group and I'll press Ctrl+H or Command+H ona Mac so you can see what's happened.We end up with this very sort of weird light gray effect and that's because I'vegot the blacks at the 50% Opacity and Illustrator is giving it a weird mix andwe'll discuss this kind of stuff more, why this kind of thing happens inIllustrator when we take a look at Opacity inside the context of theTransparency chapter which is coming up soon.But what I need to do is apply that darkening blend mode multiply.So I am going to click on Opacity.

The word opacity appear in the Control panel in order to bring up the Opacitydropdown panel and I'm going to switch from normal to multiply in order todarken that text up so that it looks like so and that's it.Now we have two variations on the T-shirts set against two variations on the background.Thanks to the ongoing power of the Recolor Artwork dialog box hereinside Illustrator.

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